REFLECTIONS ON PAST EXPERIENCE 



Laboratory, ran into major difficulties over the ques- 

 tion of where it should be located. At one point, 

 France, Italy, the FRG. and Great Britain were all 

 serious contenders and determined to win JET for 

 their own research centers. The European Commis- 

 sion, which was proposing that the Euratom com- 

 munity pay 8070 of the anticipated SI 08 million 

 (subsequently $330 million) project cost, charged an 

 independent site committee to evaluate different 

 potential locations based on scientific and social (i.e., 

 housing, educational facilities for a multinational 

 team, access, etc.) criteria. This report favored the 

 Italian site at Ispra, one of the components of the 

 community's Joint Research Center, and one which is 

 grossly underused. Italy, lobbying strongly for JET, 

 refused to approve the Community's five-year (1976 

 to 1980) fusion and plasma physics research program 

 unless a decision was taken simultaneously on the 

 JET site. 



A decision ultimately was taken to locate JET at 

 Culham thus denying Italy its prime objective. The 

 reasons why one site was selected over another (lack 

 of confidence in Italy's political stability and concern 

 over labor unrest, which historically plagued Ispra, 

 are key factors) are less important than what the con- 

 flicts over siting represent-the difficulties that can 

 arise with respect to large-scale collaborative R&D. At 

 this level of activity, the stakes become significant. A 

 project like JET is accompanied by substantial invest- 

 ments, home country advantages in future activity in 

 that technological sector, and a variety of host state 

 spin-off benefits that do not lend themselves to easy 

 quantification. The spreading of contracts in some 

 reasonable proportion to the financial commitments 

 of the participating states is a safeguard, but only an 

 incomplete one, with respect to the allocation of 

 medium and longer term benefits. 



Although in many ways comparable to CERN (a 

 basic research endeavor far from commercialization, 

 a concise, specific research activity, a shared interest 

 of all the participating governments for none of 

 whom alone an undertaking of such magnitude would 

 be easy), JET has been much more of a political foot- 

 ball. If, as is virtually certain, this is not attributable 

 to the technology, one must look to the environing 

 political circumstances and the patterns and charac- 

 teristics of European scientific and technological 

 cooperation in the community context for an ex- 

 planation. Nevertheless, it should not be discounted 

 that similar problems and concerns could arise with 

 respect to siting other experimental fusion devices 

 such as the International Tokamak Reactor (INTOR). 



The joint U.S. -Euratom power reactor and related 

 R&D programs have already been mentioned. This 

 cooperative arrangement, which called for total ex- 

 penditures of over one-half billion dollars, was a 

 major undertaking for its time. The United States had 

 been more interested in the reactor program while the 



542 



Europeans emphasized the R&D program, especially 

 to avoid the impression that the agreement was 

 merely a scheme to import U.S. reactors into the 

 community. This explains in part why the United 

 States opted for an arrangement in which each of the 

 participating partners controlled the expenditure of 

 their respective R&D contributions instead of vesting 

 responsibility in a single overarching committee. 

 Neither the reactor nor the R&D efforts ever came to 

 more than partial fruition, principally because of the 

 radically changed energy environment, which deem- 

 phasized the urgency for developing nuclear power. 

 Organizationally, the concept of two joint boards 

 with equal U.S. and Euratom membership and voting 

 power to supervise the programs, and separate boards 

 to allocate the respective contributions to the R&D 

 programs, created no problems and it could serve as 

 a model for other cooperative activities. Failure of 

 the undertaking to achieve its objectives was not the 

 result of organizational arrangements, but of extra- 

 neous factors. 



Overall, Euratom is not a good model for other 

 cooperative efforts as it really was conceived as a 

 means of achieving broader objectives that were 

 political in character and far transcended the partic- 

 ular R&D activities involved. The extensiveness of its 

 objectives is reflected in the nature and complexity of 

 its administrative apparatus, which exceeded what is 

 necessary for cooperative R&D alone. Euratom's ex- 

 perience reinforces the argument in favor of speci- 

 ficity, limitation, and clarity of purpose in entering 

 into cooperative arrangements. It also offers some in- 

 sights into the economic-commercial dimensions of 

 international cooperation: Euratom's successes came 

 in areas that were only remotely related to the com- 

 petitive status of the national nuclear industries of its 

 most important members-France, the FRG, Italy, 

 and later Great Britain. Finally, the Euratom experi- 

 ence also underscores the importance of strong and 

 sustained political commitment to successful imple- 

 mentation of cooperative undertakings. 



Euratom country experience in breeder reactor 

 R&D cooperation supports many of these conclusions 

 and highlights the contrast between broad commu- 

 nity and more selective bi- and multilateral coopera- 

 tion arrangements. Euratom early sought to develop a 

 central role in the breeder field, regarding it as posing 

 fewer obstacles to effective community action than 

 did light water reactors because national breeder 

 programs were either nonexistent or were still in a 

 rudimentary phase when Euratom came into being 

 and commercialization was a much more distant and 

 uncertain prospect. In addition, projected costs were 

 high and funding opportunities, while not unavailable, 

 also were not unlimited. It was conset|uently believed 

 that the ability to make a community contribution 

 would provide incentives to community action and 

 coordination. 



NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY/FUSION VOL 2 JULY 1982 



